Paul Huvelin
Strategic Concepts & Mechanics
Primary Evidence
"After long hesitation about what action to take, François Michelin provided some support to the ailing company. Executives from the parent company were “injected” into Bergougnan. Technicians came to finalize the development of various products: steel-reinforced conveyor belts called “Bergacier,” offshore hoses also with steel reinforcement, etc. However, the installations as a whole were outdated, management was too precarious, and Michelin did not intend to indefinitely burden itself with this enterprise, which could offer nothing in return. And Bergougnan, to keep its factories running, had engaged, at the beginning of the sixties, in a price war that greatly troubled its competitor Kléber. The circumstances were therefore favorable for François Michelin and Paul Huvelin, then head of Kléber, to meet."
"Well, we’ll see. If François Michelin acquires these 25.2 percent of Kléber’s capital, he intends to, on the other hand, stay on the doorstep. He warned Paul Huvelin and his right-hand man on Avenue Kléber, Manuel Béraldi, that he would leave them completely free rein. No question of “nurturing” the business by providing any technical, industrial, or commercial support. Especially no osmosis between the teams (the Parisian air is not necessarily good for Auvergne lungs). The two firms must remain as foreign to each other as if they were evolving in two different galaxies. There will not even be a Michelin representative on the Kléber board of directors."
"Moreover, Paul Huvelin, its president, a prestigious graduate of the Polytechnique, administrator of numerous companies, is an influential member of the establishment and the CNPF. His name is even among the possible successors of Georges Villiers at the head of the employers’ federation. (Paul Huvelin will indeed be president of the CNPF from 1966 to 1972.) Enough to unsettle more than one person in Clermont-Ferrand, where they have never liked, since time immemorial, the employer institutions and their employees who mingle too much with public officials and unionists…"